A rabble rousing programmer who hates technology but loves people

February 05, 2008

I have noticed that my gmail account now displatys "Bin" as the link for my deleted items rather than "Trash".

I discovered that I could change it back by changing my "Google Mail display language" from "English (UK)" to "English (US)". It was apparent that Google had decided to respect my cultural differences and describe my deleted item container as a "Dustbin" rather than the americanized "Trash Can".

So why did Google make this change? I had assumed that they wanted to personalise the UK experience by replacing those pesky americanisms and make my feel a bit more cosy about using a google produce that cared about letting me know that they undertsand that us brits have different needs that our colonial cousins.

However, I really don't care if I call my deleted items "Trash" or "Bin", although if I was given the choice I think that "Dustbin" would be more appropriate.

I thought that I would look at some other americanised google mail terms and see if these had been changed as well. On my gmail settings page I looked to see if the horrible "vacation" related options had been changed to the much more english "holiday". I was disappointed to see that I still had to experience the horrible vacation label.

Google, if you want to patronise me by renaming my "Trash"can as a Dust"bin" then please be consistent and change the other examples of US/UK alternatived. Or why not save us all a lot ob trouble and change the label to "Deleted" and change the "Vacation responder" to the "Gone Fishing" option instead.